National Geographic: Coming of Age with Elephants Page #2

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had overlooked:
it's called musth.

Musth is a heightened sexual

and aggressive period or rut.

And the word musth actually comes

from the Urdu meaning intoxicated.

Males start coming into musth on

average around 28, 29 years old

and their first musth periods

only last a day or two.

With time,

they last longer and longer,

and by the time they're in their mid

to late forties,

they stay in musth

for three or four months at a time.

How do you study six tons of

intoxicated male?

It takes art as well as science.

They're predictably aggressive

when they're in musth,

and even though you feel you know

an animal a 100 percent,

when they're towering over the car

and starting to put their tusk

on the bonnet,

you don't feel quite so sure

of yourself.

But over time,

the musth males accepted her,

and Joyce came to feel

at ease with them.

His name is Beach Ball

because everything about him is round,

his ears are round, his head is round,

his tusks are round,

his body is round

and his penis is round.

Beach ball, you be nice, you be nice.

I hear you've been misbehaving out

at headquarters,

knocking down fences and gates.

You be careful with my car.

I've just fixed it.

Each of the males used to have a sort

of a ritualized way of greeting me.

Um, Agamemnon used to come and put

his tusks up against the windshield,

and then throw his head back and forth

over the top of the car

with his front legs up

against the bumper.

And Alfred always, you know,

put his trunk on the bonnet.

And this one, I mean, he just,

you know,

he likes to sort of press up against

the side of the car.

He's very sensual.

The old stories of aggressive behavior

by "rogue" elephants

suddenly made sense.

Males in musth can be hostile,

but mainly to each other.

These fights captured by Joyce

in videotape

could end injury or even death.

Who wins? Size is no longer decisive.

The male who is closer to the pea

of musth has the advantage.

What they are fighting for

is the right to mate with a female

at the height of her cycle.

The dominant male stays close

to the female.

Hormones in her urine tell him

whether she's ready.

When the time is right,

they mate frequently,

while her family surrounds them.

Joyce was intrigued

not just by what she saw,

but by what she heard.

She dubbed it

"the mating pandemonium,"

a sound heard at no other time.

Joyce's discoveries about musth

made it possible,

for the first time, to understand

the complexities

of elephant mating behavior.

But now the focus of her research

was shifting.

Joyce was about to unlock the secret

language of the elephants.

The language of elephants was

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